YouTube: Sunshine in My Soul
“Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall …” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day
When we try to live a spiritually guided life in a world full of uncertainty, disappointments, and daily pressures, Longfellow’s image feels especially true. Anyone who has flown above a blanket of clouds and suddenly seen the blazing sun knows an important truth: the clouds never diminish the sun. They only block our view of it. In the same way, the light of the soul is never lost, even when our vision is obscured by discouragement or fear.
If we imagine the soul as the sun and our passing moods as cloud cover, a powerful picture emerges. We often assume that gloomy feelings define us, or that they reveal something permanent about our lives. Yet moods, like weather, are changeable. They arrive, they shift, and eventually they pass. The deeper self beneath them remains untouched—steady, radiant, and whole.
Just as many conditions shape the weather, many influences shape our emotional lives. Fatigue, loss, stress, memories, and the demands of ordinary living can gather like storm clouds within us. From a spiritual perspective, however, our native condition is not darkness but light, not turmoil but peace. What we call a “good day” may simply be a day when the inner sky is clear. What we call a “bad day” may be one when the clouds hang low and heavy. But neither kind of day changes the reality of the sun above.
This is why moments of inner stillness matter so deeply. Meditation, prayer, quiet reflection, or even a few mindful breaths can lift us above the immediate weather of the mind. We may not eliminate every cloud, but we can remember that clouds are temporary. They move. They thin. They break. And beyond them, the light remains exactly where it has always been. Stillness helps us realign with that light and trust it again.
As long as we live in this changing world, we will experience changing moods. That is part of being human. Yet we do not have to surrender our identity to every shadow that passes over us. We can pause, become still, and remember what is most true. The soul does not flicker with every circumstance. It shines. And when we turn inward with faith and patience, we discover again the enduring promise hidden within every difficult day: there is sunshine in my soul.
J Douglas Bottorff 